Page 53 of Forbidden Rancher's Return
"Doing what."
"Trying to figure out if missing you was going to kill me or just make me wish it would."
She's quiet. The jar sits untouched between us.
"What stopped you from coming back that time."
"Your father was still alive. And the belief that you deserved better than a nineteen-year-old with nothing."
"I didn't want better," she says. Same words she said at the stream. Quieter now. Without anger. Worn smooth by repetition, like a stone she's been carrying in her pocket for years.
"I know that now."
The jar passes back to me. I drink.
"I kept track," I say. "The whole time."
"How."
"People talk. You know that." I glanced over to her. "Mrs. Kincaid sends a newsletter."
Calla laughs. Real, surprised out of her, the kind of laugh that changes her whole face.
"She does not."
"She absolutely does. Three pages. Single spaced. Every month."
"You subscribed to Patty Kincaid's newsletter."
"I did not subscribe. Beck forwarded it."
Calla stares at me. "Beck."
"He never stopped entirely. Not fully." I turn the jar in my hands.
"He was angry. He had every right to be. But he sent things sometimes. Harvest reports. A photo of the new fencing on the north run." A pause. "A photo of you at the county fair. Three years ago."
Calla goes still.
"You were laughing at something," I say. "Blue ribbon hanging off your wrist. Mud on your boots."
She's quiet for a long time.
"I won the livestock competition," she says softly. "The judge tried to give it to Jim Stone out of habit, and I argued with the scores for twenty minutes in front of everyone."
"Of course you did."
"I was right."
"You're always right."
She takes the jar back. Drinks. Her shoulder presses more firmly into mine.
"You should have called," she says.
"Yes."
"You wasted eight years."
